Page 58 of Scoring Chance

“You just dump a bunch of stuff in there and hit cook. If I can handle omelets, slow cooker tacos will be a piece of cake.”

I admire his confidence. I love using the slow cooker, but getting tasty meals in there can be deceptively hard sometimes.

“Okay. Tacos sound good.”

“Great. So you’ll hang with the kids in the morning, and I gotcha covered for the afternoon.” Des pulls my waffles from the toaster and drizzles them with syrup, making deliberate concentric circles. He puts them on the kitchen table then whips off his apron.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“I gotta run to the office.” He hangs the apron on a hook in the pantry and grabs his car keys from the counter.

Without thinking, my lizard-brain self taking control, I give Des a quick kiss on the lips. “Have a good day. See you later.”

It’s quick, effortless, one of the millions of moments that make up a marriage.

“Wish me luck with cracking this Silq pitch.” Des calls out to the kids.

“Good luck!” The kids yell back.

“You should get Skibidi Toilet to be the brand’s mascot,” Dean shouts and flicks a blueberry in his mouth.

“Who’s that?” Des asks.

“Don’t ask,” I warn him. I truly believe kids should be banned from using the internet until they’re thirty.

The job fair is being held in the gymnasium of the MacArthur Community Center, which some people have taken to calling the Bea Arthur Community Center.

I love the center, but I hate it here.

I’ve got my résumé printed on decent paper, my blazer is only a little wrinkled, and I’ve practiced saying things like “I’m pivoting back into the workforce with leadership experience and strong problem-solving skills.”

But no one’s biting.

One recruiter looks at my résumé and frowns. “You don’t have a master’s?”

“It’s not required for my field.”

“Mmhmm,” she says, already sliding my résumé into a pile I know she won’t revisit.

The next guy doesn’t even ask a question. Just glances at me, sees my age, sees the graying hair at my temples, and says, “You may be too overqualified for currently open positions.”

I plaster on a smile and thank him for his time.

By the time I leave, my feet hurt, my jaw aches from all the fake grinning, and I feel like someone’s stapled “TOO OLD, TOO LATE” across my forehead.

I need to find a job. My kids deserve to see their dad working. Katie was the ambitious one in our relationship. She used her grit and drive to make partner at her firm. She quickly began outearning me, and I never flinched. I never had that toxic masculine insecurity. I was flipping proud of my wife. She was a badass, and I was happy to be on her team.

I’m not built like her or Des. I don’t have their ambition. I strive to be content. I wanted to be a dad with a good job. I wanted to make enough to give my family a solid life; I never longed for a mansion. I wanted to be the little league coach, the one who taught them how to ride their bikes, the one who’d ride the roller coasters with them. I’m the one who encourages their passions and whatever ambitions they may have.

Being an anonymous office drone worked because it allowed me to have that balance to be a dad. But now I’m jobless and fighting in an awful employment market.

I can’t slack on ambition. I have to do this for my kids. Finding a new job while in my forties is going to be a challenge. Ageism is real and it sucks. But that just means I have to fight harder. I sit in my car and close my eyes, trying to summon the ambition of my late wife and current husband.

The day gets better once I get home. Des greets me with a quick, effortless kiss that immediately washes away all the unpleasantness of the job fair.

“How’d it go?” Des asks.

“I’m not one for cursing, so I’ll just say not well.”